The American Society of Legal History Annual Meeting 2017

The American Society of Legal History will hold its annual meeting in Las Vegas on October 26th, 27th, and 28th. SLH is particularly excited about the Friday afternoon “author meets reader” session on Michelle McKinley’s book Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700. Fractional Freedoms, which was awarded the 2017 Judy Ewell Award for the Best Publication in Women’s History, presented by the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLAS), explores how thousands of slaves in colonial Peru were able to secure their freedom and keep their families intact through the use of legal mechanisms. Through extensive archival research, Professor McKinley excavated the experiences of enslaved women whose historical footprint is barely visible in the official record. In doing so she complicates the way we think about life under slavery and demonstrates the degree to which slaves were able to exercise their own agency, despite being ensnared by the Atlantic slave trade.

Commenting on Professor McKinley’s book is a panel of experts on slavery, race, and Latin American Law: Victor Uribe of Florida International University, Kelly Kennington of Auburn University, and Carolina Gonzalez of the University of Chile. The session will take place Friday afternoon at 2:15 in Room 102 of UNLV’s Boyd School of Law.

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About ASLH

The American Society for Legal History was founded in 1956 to foster interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching in the broad field of legal history. Although based in the United States, its purview and membership are international in scope. The Society sponsors a book series, Studies in Legal History, and a quarterly journal, the Law and History Review, both of which are published for the Society by Cambridge University Press.